During my time over the semester I have designed and written
a sponsorship package, written many media releases and liaised with many local
media personal, organised photo shoots and liaised with some well-known
journalists and set up a webpage and produced a heap a news bulletins, just to
name a bit.
The coolest stuff i've done laterly has been organising media. I've been the Media Officer at GWA since the start of term and have built great contacts, the event I'm involved with is recieving coverage from The West Australian and Not Another Footy Show, and I'm in talks with Foxtel and Channel 7!
What I have learnt has been through doing and its pushed me
out of my comfort zone which has challenged me. Working at GWA where they don’t
have a public relations person meant I had to jump right into the deep end and
apply my knowledge of the skills I had learnt at uni in theory into practice.
The hardest thing for me to overcome was learning through doing
and the mistakes I made because I prefer to learn by watching first. This meant
I learnt through my failures and by the things that weren’t great, which was a
reality check for me, in that in the real world you won’t be told what you’re
doing well necessarily only by the things that need improving.
The greatest improvement for me has been my writing, I honestly
struggled to write a media release at the beginning of my Prac, now I can write
one in 5 minutes no problem. I knew before my work experience that I was well
spoken in person but I found this hard to translate into text, this has been
something that I’ve defiantly improved with.
I have seen firsthand a well-run organisation that doesn’t utilise
the benefits of public relations and have seen how quickly it has benefited
from someone implementing public relations techniques. Through my experience I have
learnt so much (cliché I know) and have surprised myself. I surprised the event partner too, he offered me a job!
So goodbye blog and good luck to everyone with their reports
Peace out trouts
